Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty [101]
October. This whole landscape’s varnished with death.
He starts a new drug, D4T, another in the same family of antivirals, the same damnable class of drugs that have done nothing at all for him so far (unless, of course, what’s happening now would have happened sooner without them, but why believe that?). Dr. Magnus says there’s a good buzz about this one; people report having lots more energy, a new wave of vital force. And after a week or two there’s a flicker of new strength in Wally, too, and we wonder if he might in some way be mending? If what’s weakening him is just “viral activity,” then an antiviral ought to help. But soon he’s tingling in his fingers and toes, his hand going numb; this drug’s dangerous side effect is also permanent neuropathy, painful nerve damage to the extremities. He seems to feel as tired as ever, and his head hurts even more.
Dream: Wally and I are rehabbing a huge brick factory we’ve bought, gutting lots of it. We climb around on a large, dangerous stairway which is hard to get down, dangerous for Arden, who keeps getting his leash caught. We break for lunch (suddenly with a bunch of people) explaining how we’ll only heat one room, which will have a ceiling, even though the rest of the vast space will be open. It is beautiful—like a nineteenth century brick facade turned inside out, and extremely daunting. But I feel certain that together we can make one warm, enclosed space inside the great ruined structure.
In January, we go to Florida together. I’m teaching, in a two-week program for writers held at a resort on the Panhandle, in the area known as the “Redneck Riviera,” a brilliant strip of astonishingly white sand and water of a mild Caribbean blue, and hotels and golf courses chewing up what must have been a startling, pristine landscape once. In the decorative pool by the resort office, a stunned-looking great blue heron resides; he must be wondering what’s happened to the world he knew.
It’s been touch and go whether Wally will be able to come along; I’m not sure I’ve ever really believed it would happen. But he’s feeling mildly perky, as the date arrives, and eager for a change of scene. The setup is perfect: we have a condo with a kitchen, a bath on the first floor, and the requisite couch, so if he has to spend the whole time lying down, at least it will be on a different couch, watching a different TV.
I teach workshops in the morning, and then come back and pick up Wally in our rented turquoise Mazda, a few shades darker than the sea. We eat lunch—sandwiches I pick up at the Winn Dixie—sitting in the car, watching the pelicans on the beach. Wally never feels well enough to walk out onto that white sand, but he likes going for little drives, finding a place to park and watch a shore so different from our own.
One night I’m to give a poetry reading, and Wally decides to come, his first social outing during our stay. I drive him to the building where the reading will be held, and our friends Roger and Ellen meet him at the door. They haven’t seen him for over a year now, and it’s a shock to me to read in their faces their shock at seeing him. Is it that clear, how changed he is? Later, Roger will tell me, he had to excuse himself from the conversation so that he could go into the bathroom and cry.
I have an awful feeling, on the way home, about the toll it takes on Wally to walk through the airport in Atlanta, to make it to the plane to Boston, as if that walk’s drawing upon reserves of energy he doesn’t have any more—and since there is no reserve, it’s him that’s being drawn upon, disappearing.
My journals repeat, painfully, obsessively; they have one note to strike, helplessness.
January. What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and